maybe you're right, i don't know, i think this can work but we will never know if nobody does it, again the decision is his.
You THINK this CAN work, but have no clue how to modify a bios or how to recover from a really failing one. I leave it up to the OP if he wants to take the risk to end up with a failing device. I am out.
i've already updated , flashed the bios many times in the past but in his case i didn't want to take the risk of giving him a wrong bios version, that would be a fatal move, that's why i told him to go to the thread which concerns all what is related to the bios and that helps members to mod their bios successfully.
It's not a matter of simple flashing of the bios, it was about modifying it, the thread you linked at is about modifying bios. When the bios totally fails, good luck with recovering that, it would need a reprogramming of the bios chip itself, using an external device..
i consider flashing, updating, modifying the bios as the same thing so you're telling me that modifying and flasing are totally different things. ok so in that case, i say that flashing the bios is the only thing that has to be done. @goodflood : there was a little musunderstanding of what shoud be done in your case so no need to modify the bios, you only need to flash it so in the link i gave you tell @Serg008 to send you the newest bios version of your machine, that's all.
I keep repeating myself: What bios to flash to? The OP said it's not like a normal laptop, where there is a support site. And what if it all goes wrong? And what when there are no drivers for 7? Etc, etc, etc..... I wouldn't want to be responsible for crippling good new hardware, if it takes 8.1 or 10 i would install one of them.
what do you mean by OP ? if he wanted to install win8.1 or win10, he would have done it but it seems that he wants win7 to be installed on his machine. there has to be a recent bios version for his machine, i think @Serg008 will be able to find a recent bios version for his machine if he gives him all the needed information about his hardware. if it's the case, no other choice but install win8.1 or win10.
I use USB 2.0 (8GB or 16GB) then use USB 2.0 Bootable and works pretty standard. If I plan do USB 3.0, it pain the butt add drivers and etc.. I boot win 7 or 8.1 or 10 without UEFI works fine, use FAT32 is fine.. I would not use USB 3.0 cause more headache load the 3rd party driver for USB 3.0 or 3.1!!
@Enthousiast You are back Thank you for the caution; I know flashing BIOS can be dangerous... this is why I am slow to react. If my system is pure UEFI, how do I find out? If it turns out to be pure UEFI, does this mean I cannot install any OS wihout UEFI? I have installed Win 10 and POPOS (linux distro) in UEFI mode and booted other linux distros in non-UEFI mode from a USB. So, does this make it a windows 7 only problem? I have just installed Ubuntu-Gnome in non-UEFI mode and it booted up fine. Aside: Before making further progress on BIOS front, I downloaded and used "Windows 7 Image Updater - SkyLake\KabyLake\CoffeLake\Ryzen Threadripper" -- to mod a Win 7 ISO. Tried it in UEFI and non-UEFI mode... Same ACPI error in non-UEFI mode and Win Recovery Error in UEFI mode. I have flashed BIOS before, but from known vendor (HP) to a known vendor device (HP)... at the moment, I can only speculate and research what mobo I have and what BIOS it will take. Yes, if things go wrong it will a real S#4t. For Kabylake, wouldn't Windows Update pick up driver updates... also, I can research PCI database to find drivers. Most of the stuff is INTEL/Realtek. Tools can id hardware components inside and a look up might help... Oh, forgot to mention, I have a laptop from the same people, version 9, (this one is version 12), that also is UEFI capable, and I installed windows 7 on it years ago. I am staying away from win 10 at the moment because I want to find a tool that can software strip the fsck out of it... like organization do to customize their user installs. Maybe windows 8.1 is an option, I haven't looked at. @mehdibleu I haven't contacted @Serg008 with my specific problem, but I plan to soon. EDIT: Windows 8.1 is just like windows 10 :-( *sad face*
To answer both of your question, there is no CSM or legacy bios option in your bios, that's why we came to the conclusion that your bios contains only pure UEFI. i know that both win8.1 and win10 can be installed using pure UEFI, for win7 it's a little bit more complicated, for example i cannot install win7 in my machine with pure UEFI, i have to enable both legacy and UEFI to be able to install win7 in UEFI , on the other hand win8.1 and win10 can both be installed on pure UEFI in my machine. So in your case, you will probably manage to install either win8.1 or win10 on pure UEFI without flashing the bios. For win7, that's a different story, i want to believe that flashing the bios will allow you to install win7 on pure UEFI but again this is not guaranteed to work as @Enthousiast said it previously, no one managed to install win7 on pure UEFI until now and i can confirm that as win7 cannot be installed in my machine on pure UEFI.
@mehdibleu I thought so,... about my BIOS. So, this means it must be a newer BIOS version as previous versions would have supported CSM/LEGACY mode. So, in a sense, I have to downgrade the BIOS (in android speak)? Yes, I have installed Win 10 and have it currently installed. I looked at the BIOS update utilities for AMI. They are two versions and they themselves have x86 and x64 versions with different zip files inside... too afraid to even unzip. I have posted a message here about BIOS help: https://forums.mydigitallife.net/th...ony-vaio-and-others.8194/page-95#post-1410876 Let's see if I get a response from someone.
Nothing guarantees that you will have CSM options available after you have downgraded the bios and i don't think such a thing has occured until now after downgrading the bios.
checkout youtube for the windows legacy modules needed. .or insanelymac. you might need dsdt edited to allow acpi for osid of windows ? i was looking at similar p/n searches and found some clevo might be close model and compare dsdt to a windows type.
@LatinMcG Thank you for the info. I am still trying to wrap my head around CLOVER. Looks like another GRUB, but for Mac (although Windows and Linux also supported). I am a "zero" when it comes to OSX, but I decent with Linux know-how. Still it is too much to take in quickly. It appears that CLOVER sits between the mobo chip software and the OS, and thereby helping bridge the incompatibility. A lot of tutorials are for Mac (and another OS) dual boot... I haven't found one for just windows or Linux to try... I might as well give the sierra ISO a spin just to see how this works. Thanks!
Question: I installed Windows 10 in UEFI mode, then, while installing/modifying clover using easyUEFi, I see that my M2 has a shim64.efi [see attached] I had used a bootable Linux USB to simply delete all partitions and create a new partition table in GPT. Is the existence of a shim64.efi normal? Do I need to get rid of it for Windows 7, and if so, how?
Well, this is going nowhere. It is impossible to boot Windows 7 in UEFI mode if CSM mode isn't present and enabled in firmware. You can't 'add' CSM modules in a compiled firmware in a generic modding mechanism. In a similar way, there is no generic way to emulate it using Clover (or any UEFI bootloader). Depending on the architecture, changing the OSID in DSDT may yield nothing. I haven't looked in to the firmware dump yet, but depending on the revision it's quite possible that CSM modules mayn't exist in it, thus booting Windows 7 is impossible on it.